LONDON (AP) – The British police minister said on Monday that “human error” had led to the deletion of hundreds of thousands of DNA records and other data about criminals from the national police computer.
Kit Malthouse told lawmakers in the House of Commons that the crash occurred during a “regular housekeeping process” on the computer, which contained 13 million records. He said about 400,000 records had been erased, including 213,000 offense records and 170,000 arrest records.
“It is clear that this situation is very serious,” Malthouse said, adding: “We will know the full extent of the impact of this issue over the next few days.”
Labor lawmaker Yvette Cooper said it was “very difficult to understand how 400,000 plates can be removed from such an important system without a proper backup system in place.”
Malthouse said officials were trying to recover the data, but he could not guarantee that no criminal investigation would be harmed by the error. He said the government is working to ensure that any operational impact is prevented or mitigated.